Passenger Behavior - Does if Differ ?

[RICKnVICK]

I have at this point only sailed Carnival and RCCL.  My last Carnival cruise in January was some of the worst behavior I have ever encountered.  A family of 90 were completely out of control in practically every area.  The crew either didn't or couldn't control them.  I am talking NASTY behavior.  This did not ruin my cruise, but I will say honestly that if me and my friends were in a particular venue and saw some of this family coming, we left.  I realize it was our choice to leave, but that choice was better than the alternative. 

 

Vicki

[Karysa]

Ok good point about people being hired to stop the Chinese people from public spitting prior to the Olympics. I can now see why that would have been necessary and how the bathroom and yes even the urinal is a better place to spit than out on the street or pool deck, in reference to cruising.

[navybankerteacher]

I do not think it differs that much among lines — the sad fact is that people everywhere seem to pay more attention to what they want than to feeling any interest in what others want. Different nationalities might have different ways of being self absorbed,  but at bottom there is little real difference

[MicCanberra]

I think length of cruise changes behaviour aboard dramatically, note that the short cruises also attract a much more party animal type demographic.

[Winchester Ranger]

I should have called this the spitting thread 😂

 

Thanks for the responses - most of you have confirmed what I have seen commented on elsewhere, many thanks it helps set expectations.

[Haoie]

Cultural relativism is a funny thing isn't it?

[MicCanberra]

59 minutes ago, Winchester Ranger said:

I should have called this the spitting thread 😂

 

Thanks for the responses - most of you have confirmed what I have seen commented on elsewhere, many thanks it helps set expectations.

It is strange how some threads go off on tangents.

[ALWAYS CRUZIN]

Simple to understand. If you want a wild type of cruise. Go during spring break on Carnival.  If you want a lot of kids around, go on Carnival or Royal Caribbean during summer when school is out. Otherwise most all ships during the rest of the year are fine. We enjoy Celebrity, Princess, Royal Caribbean and Carnival in that order. We always do Carnival for Halloween. That is a mild wild cruise and a lot of fun. We are in our 70s, dress up and enjoy all the fun. Did Halloween on other lines and bored at best.

[Canuker]

Interesting read, this thread.
The postings, of course, give clues about the writers who are critiquing their fellow-guests.
I am certainly not qualified to make any judgment on the subject.
This whole website is teeming with cruisers' views of cruise lines. I sometimes wonder what the cruise lines think of the cruisers. I don't suppose there's a website that covers that?
CruiserCritic, maybe?
Or a book - 'Diary of a cabin steward'?

Edited April 20, 2019 by Canuker

[calliopecruiser]

25 minutes ago, Canuker said:

I don't suppose there's a website that covers that?

Oh, I'm sure there is -- at least about what cruise line employees think of cruisers (not what the corporation thinks).......these days there's a tell-all website for just about every job type where employees can vent their frustration about their customers/clients.

[pris993]

I have cruised the Mediterranean a lot, but not on MSC.  Suggest you ask the question on MSC board.

 

Have not observed bad behavior on Mediterranean cruises - we have  cruised Princess, HAL, Cunard, Celebrity, Crystal, NCL in the Mediterranean.

 

Mediterranean cruises are very port intensive, most passengers are too tired to be bad after all day in port.  LOL

[Shmoo here]

On 3/31/2019 at 1:19 PM, Winchester Ranger said:

I’m just looking for some honest feedback on your recent personal experiences,

The worst behaved passengers I've seen on all of our cruises were both on Disney cruises

1) a "lady" on our first Panama Canal cruise who felt everyone and everything onboard the ship should cater only to her whims.  And she was very LOUD about it.  We'd see her every day at the Guest services desk complaining (loudly) about one thing or another.

2) When DCL did Kids Sail Free on one of our Mexican Riviera cruises, the large number of kids (seemingly without parents in attendance) were running around, unrestrained in any way.  It was a total madhouse.

[Winchester Ranger]

Cultural relativism is always interesting and thorny in equal measure since it is so subjective, but I will (nervously) add in my own 2 cents to the discussion, it’s a bit of a journey down memory lane so bear with me.  

 

When we sailed on Carnival Miracle back in the days when I was poor and she was brand new, we snagged a balcony cabin for exactly $1,000 for 2 adults sailing from Baltimore to the Caribbean for a week, yes Baltimore !  Carnival back then (2004 I think) didn’t have the bargain basement reputation it seems to have acquired now, and we only got our cheap tickets courtesy of DW being a travel agent.  We fell in love with Miracle when we were invited aboard for lunch and a cabin tour as part of DW’s job selling vacations on her, and they said we could sail all inclusive for $500 each if we wanted to - so it was a yes !!  Our fellow passengers were an absolute delight, fun to be around and very well behaved, perfect travel companions actually.  We made friends with our MDR servers, a girl from Romania and her young assistant from Latvia, gosh I wonder where they are today, and I remember asking them about passenger behavior.  The Romanian girl (who was very professional) told us that they loved the passengers sailing from Baltimore but that they were all dreading the impending switch to New York, as the NYC passengers were known to be very rude and demanding (who knew !).  My point being that cultural differences don’t need international lines of separation, they can even occur between ports of departure in the same country.  I will however add one thought on the “spitting” sidebar discussion.  Spitting is a cultural phenomenon in China as has been mentioned above, and it has to be understood in that light as disgusting as it is.  Perhaps the worst experience I heard about was from a friend of mine who had to catch an internal flight between Chinese cities while on business, and was treated to the sight of his fellow passengers using the seat back pocket as their personal spittoon.  So never ever reach into there to retrieve the in flight safety card on a Chinese airline, best advice you will hear today 😊

[Cruzaholic41]

My worst was a Costa cruise out of Italy. The passengers were mostly Neapolitan. The behavior and overall rudeness was so bad, I disembarked the cruise early. 

 

From the States, the worst behavior I’ve seen were on short Carnival cruises. Short cruises tend to attract rambunctious folks anyways but it’s magnified on Carnival. 

 

Short Carnival cruises are followed closely by any cruise out of NY/NJ. 

Edited April 21, 2019 by Cruzaholic41

[SRF]

On 4/1/2019 at 2:24 PM, martincath said:

I was actually reading an interview recently with the individual charged with getting Beijing locals to stop spitting in public before the Olympics - and their preferred place to recommend spitting was in public loos if there was one present. Anyone who's ever had to deal with poor air quality quickly realises that spitting and nose-blowing is a necessity, so it really is just where and how one performs these actions that matters - doing it somewhere that urination is acceptable cannot possibly be anything but an appropriate location.

 

If that poster is aghast at spitting in a urinal, they should not travel to Asia, where everyone spits on the street.

 

Oh, and men also stand and urinate in public.

 

I was in China the year before the Olympics, and they had already started to try to get the people to stop spitting and urinating on the street, to not show that to the world.  They were having a hard time convincing people that they needed to change.  Of course, with a Communist gov, they can MAKE the people comply.

[GUT2407]

More to do with time and length of cruise in my experience.

[A2Mich]

The most rude passengers were an extended family on a 10 day Princess Cruise.   Based on their regional accents,  my guess is that they were from the NJ/NY area. They had a series of 4 or 5 cabins grouped in the same general area.  The issue was with how they chose to communicate with each other.  Instead of walking from cabin to cabin, or finding one common place to congregate, they would all hang out in their cabins with their doors open, and simply yell from one cabin to another, sometimes until 2am or later.  After talkin to them and asking them to keep it down didn’t work, a few calls to security eventually got them to either walk cabin to cabin, or to use their phones.  The only other rather rude behavior I’ve witnessed personally, were the drivers of mobility scooters that love to hit your ankles from behind.  

[GUT2407]

32 minutes ago, A2Mich said:

The most rude passengers were an extended family on a 10 day Princess Cruise.   Based on their regional accents,  my guess is that they were from the NJ/NY area. They had a series of 4 or 5 cabins grouped in the same general area.  The issue was with how they chose to communicate with each other.  Instead of walking from cabin to cabin, or finding one common place to congregate, they would all hang out in their cabins with their doors open, and simply yell from one cabin to another, sometimes until 2am or later.  After talkin to them and asking them to keep it down didn’t work, a few calls to security eventually got them to either walk cabin to cabin, or to use their phones.  The only other rather rude behavior I’ve witnessed personally, were the drivers of mobility scooters that love to hit your ankles from behind.  

Or rude people who just step in front of your scooter, or wheelchair and stop.

[A2Mich]

2 minutes ago, GUT2407 said:

Or rude people who just step in front of your scooter, or wheelchair and stop.

 

Very true.  Reminds me of the rude people who will literally run to beat everyone else to get onto an elevator/lift.

Edited April 21, 2019 by A2Mich

[K32682]

1 hour ago, A2Mich said:

The only other rather rude behavior I’ve witnessed personally, were the drivers of mobility scooters that love to hit your ankles from behind.  

 

Zero tolerance for that. I was deliberately hit from from behind by a goof on a scooter who laughed about it.  My response did not take his disability into consideration.  He stopped laughing, was very close to crying and studiously avoided me thereafter. 

 

Edited April 21, 2019 by K32682

[A2Mich]

1 hour ago, K32682 said:

 

Zero tolerance for that. I was deliberately hit from from behind by a goof on a scooter who laughed about it.  My response did not take his disability into consideration.  He stopped laughing, was very close to crying and studiously avoided me thereafter. 

 

 

I can understand, somewhat, if they are relatively new to driving one, but I believe that they do have working brakes on them (the ones at the grocery store do not, so they keep rolling a bit after you release the switch), so there really should be no reason for them to run into anyone, unless someone happens to walk out in front of them.  I get a kick out of the people who put a little bell or horn on them and cruise the hallways honking or ringing the bell at everyone before they mow them down.  Thankfully, most people using mobility scooters tend to be polite and careful while driving,

[GUT2407]

1 hour ago, A2Mich said:

 

I can understand, somewhat, if they are relatively new to driving one, but I believe that they do have working brakes on them (the ones at the grocery store do not, so they keep rolling a bit after you release the switch), so there really should be no reason for them to run into anyone, unless someone happens to walk out in front of them.  I get a kick out of the people who put a little bell or horn on them and cruise the hallways honking or ringing the bell at everyone before they mow them down.  Thankfully, most people using mobility scooters tend to be polite and careful while driving,

Never had one with brakes, simply release the throttle or joystick.

[A2Mich]

1 hour ago, GUT2407 said:

Never had one with brakes, simply release the throttle or joystick.

 

Ah ok.  I’m not in need of one (though I had used one for a short while after surgery), but thought I had seen personally owned ones with a hand brake, similar to a bicycle brake lever.

[GUT2407]

27 minutes ago, A2Mich said:

 

Ah ok.  I’m not in need of one (though I had used one for a short while after surgery), but thought I had seen personally owned ones with a hand brake, similar to a bicycle brake lever.

That may have been the throttle, scooters often have one each side, right one go forward, left go back

[A2Mich]

5 minutes ago, GUT2407 said:

That may have been the throttle, scooters often have one each side, right one go forward, left go back

 

You may very well be correct, as it sounds as if you may be a regular user of one.  My experience was limited to about 3 months of use once or twice per week at the supermarket.  I was surprised when they continued to roll quite a bit further than I anticipated.